From the Head
Even on a week where the weather has been relentlessly grey and rainy, school life at St Olave’s has felt purposeful, calm and full of life. There is something deeply reassuring about the steady rhythm of a school week, and it has been a pleasure to see the children getting on with their learning so positively, despite the gloomy skies outside! I wanted to share some staffing updates with you, as transparency and reassurance matter greatly to me. This week, we have welcomed several new colleagues to our team, strengthening our provision and ensuring continuity and quality across the school. We are pleased to welcome Calum Prior and Megan Mead to our music team. Their appointments allow us to continue delivering a high-quality and varied music programme while Mrs Aldridge and Miss Penney are not in school. Both have settled in quickly and are already making a positive contribution to lessons. Music is an important part of school life at St Olave’s, and I am confident that this provision remains in very capable hands.
We have also welcomed Miss Sikalaev Heath to our teaching team this week. She brings a broad range of experience from a range of settings, which will be of real benefit to the school. She is passionate about creating learning environments where children feel supported, confident, included and able to thrive as themselves. Miss Heath is very much looking forward to getting to know the children and working in partnership with families as she teaches across the school.
As ever, my focus is on ensuring that St Olave’s remains a place where children are taught with skill, cared for with love and consistency and supported to do their very best and the staff continue to work tirelessly to ensure that we do our very best for every child in our care. Finally, I am very much looking forward to seeing many of you next week as our Upper School children take part in the Young Voices performance at the O2. It promises to be a wonderful opportunity to celebrate teamwork, commitment and the joy of shared achievement. Have a lovely weekend and I will see you all on Monday. Kind regards, Miss Holloway
The week ahead...
Lunch Menu
Monthly Safeguarding Update
January – Attendance Matters
Did you know that attendance is closely linked to wellbeing and safety? If your child is struggling to come into school, let us know early so we can support you. Children who miss school can be more vulnerable - together we can make sure every child is present, safe, and learning.
Focus on School Values
Our school value of Commitment continues to guide our thinking this half term, encouraging children to stick at things, show up with purpose and take pride in doing the right thing, even when it isn’t the easiest path. In Monday’s assembly, I shared the inspiring picture book Emmanuel’s Dream by Laurie Ann Thompson. It tells the true story of Emmanuel, a boy born with one strong leg who cycled across Ghana to challenge perceptions and show what was possible. His commitment, courage and belief in doing what’s right offered a powerful lesson for us all. The weekly manner we are focusing on is: “If you bump into someone, even if it’s an accident, say ‘Excuse me.’” As always, we want our children to build habits that show care and responsibility, even in the smallest interactions. A simple “Excuse me” can repair a moment and show empathy. Please do help us reinforce this at home. Noticing these small courtesies helps them become second nature. A great companion book for home this week might be Kind by Alison Green - a beautifully illustrated celebration of thoughtful, respectful choices.
This week at St Olave's
Year 5 trip to The Design Museum Year 5 pupils had the opportunity to visit The Design Museum this week, where they explored a mind blowing Wes Anderson Archive of props, outfits, video clips and memorabilia affiliated with decades of the famous film director’s iconic movies. Pupils could see the process behind stop motion animation and the painstaking time and effort required to achieve these films as well as read about the meticulous symmetry, vibrant color palettes, and a theatrical, storybook feel that Wes Anderson’s films display. Year 5 continued to explore the static exhibits in the Design museum which display a range of making processes and explain the reasoning and evolution behind many everyday and iconic design pieces that have shaped our modern lives.
Year 3 trip to Hall Place On Tuesday, Year 3 thoroughly enjoyed their trip to Hall Place, where the children explored and played with Victorian toys. This hands-on experience really brought our history topic, The History of Childhood, to life and the children were fascinated to compare toys from the past with those they enjoy today.
Poet in Residence This week, Upper School worked with Adisa to choose and edit their poems ahead of their showcase on Monday. In their year groups, children worked on uplevelling, vocabulary and structure. In addition to this, they worked on their performance, thinking carefully about intonation and stress. The children are looking forward to sharing their pieces with you at their showcases.
Dementia workshop This week, Year 6 had the opportunity to become Dementia Friends. We were visited by a representative from the charity who came to speak to us about Dementia and how best to support people in our own community that may be dealing with the disease. As a year group, we discussed how much our brains control and the impact Dementia could have on everyday life. The children worked well and are now wearing their new badges with pride.
Sporting Round Up
Wednesday saw St Olave's host two games of football at Footscray RFC for our Years 5 and 6. Both year groups worked tirelessly and showed good team work and determination during their fixtures. Unfortunately both teams lost the match, with Year 6 losing 6-2, and Year 5 losing 6-5 in a thriller of a match! Goals galore highlighted the Year 5 game in an end to end battle. Well played everyone!
Notices
Young Voices The children are incredibly excited about next week's event at The O2! If you have any last minute questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you for your continued support. Ms Tyler
Nursery
The Little Acorns have had a very busy week filled with all number of different learning opportunities! This week there has been lots of reading and writing in the classroom with the children listening to a variety of stories as well as sharing their favourites with their friends. Some of the children have begun to use their phonic knowledge to read and write some simple words and others have been listening out for sounds and matching them to letters.
The wet January weather has not deterred our intrepid children (and adults!) from getting outside and we have taken wellie walks, spread some bark chippings in the mud kitchen and even played Floor is Lava in the allotment!! This game is a great favourite with the children as they look for different places to balance and use their gross motor skills to move about without touching the floor.
Reception
Although the snow didn’t arrive, we’ve continued to have lots of fun exploring ice and learning about penguins. This week, our Drawing Club sessions were inspired by one of the well-known Pingu stories. The story encouraged the children to think about the importance of picking up litter and how it can pollute our oceans and environment. The children created their own penguin, a tasty treat, and a litter picker to help collect unwanted rubbish. They also added their own special codes, making the rubbish invisible, having fish fly out of their penguin’s flippers, and even turning marshmallows into chocolate! Clubs have also started again, and the children have enjoyed finding numbers to create fantastic pictures, beginning to learn how to draw and sketch in Super Sketchers, and making delicious snowmen using a range of fresh fruit. (Can you tell we’re still hoping for snow with the running theme throughout our learning?!) The children continue to surprise us with their knowledge of number and their confident use of a five frame. To further challenge them, we have introduced an additional five frame to create a ten frame. The children have been exploring more than and less than a given number, as well as identifying number patterns such as 4 and 2 make 6, 3 and 3 make 6, and 10 take away 4 makes 6. One of our friends in Reception came in wearing her own lanyard, which opened up a whole new area of curiosity as the children wondered why we use them. We went on a walk around the school to see how lanyards are used, and the children were so inspired that they decided to design and make their own! Have a lovely weekend! We look forward to hearing all about it on Tapestry.
Year 1
The children have had a fantastic week in Year 1. They have shown great enthusiasm for their learning and have tried their very best in all of the tasks given to them — we are incredibly proud of their efforts. In English, the children have been developing their skills in writing character descriptions. They began by identifying appropriate adjectives and then used these to create expanded noun phrases. They also consolidated their understanding of what a statement is and wrote their own, adding detail through descriptive language. In Maths, we have continued our work on place value to 20. The children have been exploring the numbers 11–20 and learning to use language such as tens and ones. They have used the part–whole model to identify how many tens and ones make up each teen number. In our Topic lessons, we have been focussing on Art this week. The children have been learning about primary colours and experimenting with colour mixing to create secondary colours using a variety of media. They also enjoyed using paint to print with fruit and vegetables, producing some wonderful creative outcomes. In Science, we have continued our topic on materials by identifying what different classroom objects are made from. This has helped the children to think carefully about the world around them and the materials we use every day. We hope you all have a wonderful weekend, and we look forward to seeing the children again on Monday.
Year 2
The second week of our half-term and we have already made huge progress in all our subjects. In English this week we started our focus topic of story mapping by exploring Claude in the City by Alex T Smith. We first had a look at the way we could describe Claude with expanded noun phrases to refresh our memories. We then exercised our creative thinking skills by discussing the possibilities for different adventures Claude could go on and introduced the idea of problems and solutions within a story. We can’t wait for next week to see where Claude will go and begin thinking of our own Claude adventures to write. In maths, we finished our shape topic by exploring the edges and vertices of 3D shapes. We found this tricky to visualise and count but we learned techniques to help us with drawing out the faces, circling and marking and even using blue tack to help us with physical examples. We then moved onto our new topic of money. We all found it interesting to discuss how often we handled money in today’s society and how many of us have coins at home! In Science, we are developing our knowledge about materials by describing their properties. This week, the focus was to investigate the stretchiness of materials and explain what they are suitable for. We had fun working together to stretch and pull each fabric and demonstrated some excellent measuring and recording skills. We continued our ‘Extreme Weather’ topic in the afternoons this week, turning our attention to weather conditions in the UK. We considered the extreme snow we have been experiencing and the ways we could keep safe if we were to have a snow weather warning. We were fascinated to learn about the causes and impact of a sudden flash flood that happened in Cornwall in 2004, watching news reports and studying maps to increase our knowledge of places. We also had some great discussions about the recent snow that some areas of the country have had this week and how we can keep safe in these conditions if the storm did manage to make its way to New Eltham!
Year 3
Year 3 have enjoyed a varied and full week! In PSHE, we have begun our new topic Healthy Me. The children have been learning about what it means to live a healthy lifestyle, including the importance of balanced diets, regular exercise and making positive choices. They have shown great enthusiasm during discussions and activities, sharing ideas about how they can look after both their bodies and minds. Continuing our investigation of multiplication and division in maths, the children have been practising different methods to solve problems and develop their confidence when selecting efficient strategies. In English, we have been exploring story setting descriptions through the book Window. The children have used rich vocabulary and imaginative language to describe changing settings over time, inspired by the illustrations in the story. Their writing has shown great creativity and growing attention to detail and we look forward to seeing these skills continue to develop.
Year 4
We have had a wonderfully busy and engaging week in Year 4, filled with creativity, curiosity and excellent learning across the curriculum. In English, the children have continued their focus on the fairy tale The Princess and the Pea, and they have thoroughly enjoyed reading and comparing different versions of the story. This week, they listened to a version set in Africa and another tale where the pea was the central character and narrator, as well as a third retelling by Lauren Child. These variations sparked thoughtful discussions about perspective and storytelling. The children have been developing their writing skills by first innovating their own versions of the story, using fronted adverbials at the start of each sentence. They then learned how to infer characters’ feelings and thoughts by closely examining illustrations. Building on this, the children practised writing their own dialogue, revisiting how to write speech bubbles before converting them into accurate direct speech. In Maths, the children have been practising how to multiply and divide using efficient strategies for 10 and 100. They are steadily improving their ability to reason and explain their thinking in more detail, which has been particularly impressive. In Science, we started our new topic on 'sound'. After discussing where sound comes from, the children explored a detailed diagram of the ear and learned how sound travels. They asked thoughtful questions and showed great enthusiasm for the topic. In Geography, the children loved completing a senses web while watching a video of the Amazon rainforest, which is our new topic. It was exciting to hear the many questions they want to investigate further, and this topic links beautifully with our Faster Read text, The Journey to the River Sea. We also had our final session with Adisa, who guided the children in editing and improving their poems. He spoke about the importance of considering the feelings they want to evoke in their audience. We then spent time practising performance techniques in preparation for our poetry performance for you on Monday. Thank you, as always, for your continued support. We are very proud of the enthusiasm and effort Year 4 have shown this week.
Year 5
Year 5’s week continued as busy as it started with Monday seeing us returning from our Design Museum trip in time for our final poetry sessions with Adisa. Year 5 have thrown themselves into the sessions and our recent poetry unit has seen the clear impact of the project, with the children producing strong, nuanced poems based on memory and identity. In English, we have delved into our new core text 'The Arrival by Shaun Tau', a migrant story told as a series of wordless images. A man leaves his wife and child in an impoverished town, seeking better prospects in an unknown country on the other side of a vast ocean. The strange, otherworldly images have provoked thoughtful discussion and will be the basis for our formal letter writing. Children have annotated letters written by the migrant as he journeys through the peculiar and curious land, identifying key elements and correct layout. In maths, we have consolidated our knowledge of circles, ensuring that we know our chords from our circumferences, and our sectors from our segments. We have also introduced probability this week, exploring how we may assign a numerical value to terms of likelihood, including certain, likely, even chance, unlikely and impossible. Children applied their knowledge of the fraction, decimal and percentage relationship in order to construct probability scales and calculate probabilities in different ways.
Year 6
In English, pupils focused on developing their writing by applying varied sentence openers, using amplification to intensify meaning, and expanding sentences through the effective use of clauses and punctuation. These skills helped them to create more engaging, detailed and fluent pieces of writing. We were blown away with their development of vocabulary and understanding of the impact of tone in their writing, which resulted in powerful descriptions. In Mathematics, we explored scale factors and applied this to scaling up and down. We then applied our understanding to ratio and scale-factor reasoning to similar. Once Year 6 mastered this, they applied this further to a variety of problems involving ratio. In Science, the children explored electrical circuits, learning to identify and use standard circuit symbols and understand how components work together to create a functioning circuit. In Religious Education, we studied the origins of Islam, developing their understanding of key beliefs and historical foundations of the religion. In addition to this, we were very fortunate to have our Dementia Friends workshop.
Outdoor Learning
This week has been another variable one with the weather. One moment it has been freezing cold, then warm and later this week very wet! The children have been out looking for various creatures and Year 2 and 3 found lots of woodlice, worms, slugs and an enormous garden spider. Year 5 started to study the trees that we have in the allotment and Year 6 began researching bees. Year 4 looked at the birds we have in the allotment and were lucky to have a dry day to see a large number of them and also to listen to the sounds they were making. Year 1 went out to collect items which interested them and put them into their matchboxes. The younger children were happy to get very muddy wandering around the plot and saw a fox and a cat!
Languages
In French, Nursery, Reception and Year 1 did a great job learning about family. The children are already very confident with the vocabulary and they enjoyed playing memory games. Year 2 had a lesson on phonics: they focused on the sounds UN and ON, whilst Year 3 carried on working on the weather, playing charades and practising translations. Year 4 also had a lesson on phonics, focusing on the sounds CH and J, and played the old favourite “smash the avocado” game. In Spanish, Year 5 started the new topic of the half term, school, talking about school subjects and introducing the -ar verb “estudiar”. Year 6 carried on working on ¿cómo eres?: the focus of the children this week has moved from translation to written production.
In Latin, Year 6 focused on the imperative verbs: the children started to commit to memory a long list of commands, both at the singular and plural form, and practised them with the game “Simon says” in Latin.
Design & Technology and Computing
Quiz of the week, ask your child if they can explain what the words in bold mean. Year 3 Electronic Posters Pupils in Year 3 learned about visual aids and communication through imagery and how persuasive language can impact the message of a sign or poster. Year 4 Slingshot Cars This week Year 4 pupils attached the straw and wooden dowel axle sections, wheels and hook features to the chassis of their cars. Year 6 Microbit Arcade Year 6 pupils assembled the case for their Microbit. Computing highlights Year 1 started planning a photo story in order to understand the importance of sequencing in code. Year 2 explored machine learning and how large quantities of data are fed into computers for programs to define and understand how to carry out tasks, in this lesson we focused on how computers recognise drawings. Year 3 explored the advantages of e-mail and how to stay safe when using e-mail accounts. Year 4 started building the sub pages for their collaborative website that will include the research they have undertaken regarding weather prediction and the devices used to generate the data required for this. Year 5 explored how the Mars Rover landed on Mars and some of the obstacles encountered in communicating with Earth. Pupils in Year 6 learned about secret codes and some methods used to decipher them they enjoyed using the Ceasar Cipher method